Containment of high-speed rotating disk fragments

Disk burst accidents sometimes happen in aeroengines. To avoid tragic consequences, aeroengine casings must have sufficient containment capability. Experiments and simulations need to be conducted to study the impact, distortion, and perforation caused by disk burst and which may give important clues to potential failure mechanisms. This paper presents some containment tests of high-speed rotating disk fragments, in which the original disks were burst into three equal fragments within a predetermined rotating speed range. The failure modes of the containment casing varied significantly with the thickness of the containment casing. Shearing, tearing, tensile fracture, and large plastic stretching deformation occurred in a thin-walled containment casing, while a thick-walled casing could contain disk fragments and withstand large plastic deformation. Numerical simulations were carried out to study the impact process and failure modes further. Good agreement was found between the results of the simulations and the tests.